It is well known that deer and other big game species have acute senses and lightning-quick reflexes. When hunting such game with a bow and arrow, it is not uncommon that such game will hear the noise from a bow when the arrow is released towards the animal, and the animal sometimes actually reacts quickly enough to move out of the way of the arrow before the arrow reaches such animal. Numerous solutions to this problem have been proposed over the years and the conventional approach to the problem has been to attach something to the string above the nocking point for the arrow and another identical structure below the nocking point, typically somewhat midway between the nocking point and the outer end of the string. U.S. Pat. No. 3,837,327 to Saunders et al shows one of the proposed solutions to this problem. Other prior art solutions have been to attach a plurality of short pieces of yarn and/or tying a bundle of short and narrow strips of flexible rubber to the string. While these prior art solutions have reduced the noise from bows to a great degree, the problem of deer or other game "jumping the string" as described above is still a problem because the noise has not been eliminated sufficiently.
In recent years, archery bow manufacturers have been producing and selling what is commonly referred to as a "cam bow", which is a name used in the art to describe a bow similar to the one shown in FIG. 1, but wherein the eccentrically mounted wheels on the end of the limbs are not circular when viewed from the side, but instead are of a different cam-like shape to cast the arrow with more force and speed. A universal problem with such cam-type bows is that they are noisy, as compared to similar bows using circular eccentrics. Despite the noise problem, these cam-type bows are in widespread usage because archers purchasing these bows have apparently decided that getting the extra speed of the arrow from these bows is more important to them than the quietness of the bow when shot. If these cam-type bows could be as quiet as other compound bows, then the hunting archer could have the best of both worlds.
Consequently there is a need for an improved bow and string silencer which is more efficient than the silencers presently available in the prior art.